Morphologies of Core-Shell-Cylinder-Forming ABC Star Triblock Copolymers in Nanopores

The self-assembly behavior of ABC star triblock copolymers can lead to a large number of nanostructures. Indeed, many new and interesting structures have already been discovered and proven to be hotspot in soft matter physics research. In this work, we introduce different phase diagrams of core-shell-cylinder-forming ABC star triblock copolymers under different conditions, including in-bulk and pore geometries with different sizes. The relation between the pore size geometries and their corresponding structures are also revealed. The different properties of the surface potential field that significantly affect the self-assembly process of ABC star triblock copolymers are investigated as well.

Simulation of Surface-Induced Morphology Transition and Phase Diagram of Linear Triblock Copolymers under Spherical Confinement

In this work,the nanostructures and phase diagrams of lamella-forming and cylinder-forming ABC linear triblock copolymers confined in spherical cavities are investigated on the basis of real-space self-consistent field theory.We designate specific monomer-monomer interactions and block composition and study morphology transformation under spherical confinement with a neutral surface.Various potentially valuable morphological structures,such as two-or three-colored spheres,rotational structures,and biconcave disklike structures,are identified in the phase diagrams constructed on confining diameters.Single confinement induces an obvious transformation of self-assembled structures,which still retain some of the conformational properties of bulk structures.We then focus on phase morphology under preferential surfaces.Absorption can smooth out differences in block ratios,and similar structures can be assembled from block copolymers with different proportions.We incorporate a non-centrosymmetric feature into our spherical confinement model and design a Janus adsorption field to explore unpredictable microphase behavior.Results show that the unbalance of the block ratio causes adsorption to exert a stable shaping effect on conformation.The influence of confinement on the degree of freedom of polymer chains disrupts the influence of adsorption on the complexity and transformation activity of self-assembled structures.The theoretical results correspond to recent experimental observations and contribute to the field functional material synthesis.

Surface-induced Morphologies of ABC Star Triblock Copolymer in Spherical Cavities

The morphologies and phase diagrams exhibited by symmetric ABC star triblock copolymer nanoparticles are investigated on the basis of real-space self-consistent field theory. The ABC star triblock copolymers were chosen to be tiling-forming with fixed polymer parameter and the spherical boundaries were modeled using the masking technique. We first study a number of examples where the ABC triblock copolymers confined in spherical cavities with neutral surface. Then, two types of spherical cavity distinct preferential surfaces are considered, including both A-block attractive and repulsive preferential surfaces. We aim at the effects due to various spherical cavity diameters and the degree of interactions between the polymer and the spherical surface. A variety of morphologies, such as ring-like structures, concentric sphere, and irregular cylinder, were identified in phase diagrams. The results show that both the degree of interactions and spherical diameters can influence the formation of morphologies so that ring-like structures and other novel structures could be obtained.